As chemical dumping becomes an increasing concern of the Environmental Protection Agency, and state and county air and water control board, the problem of pollution is becoming less of a general problem to the world community as a whole, and more of an onus borne directly by those engaged in activities for the benefit of society, but which utilize toxic material
Specifically, federal, state, and local rules for the disposal of wastes which are considered to be toxic can be extremely onerous and expensive on the small businessman. It may cost $2,000.00 or more to have even one 55-gallon drum of so-called toxic material hauled to a disposal site, and the list of materials and their concentrations that are considered toxic gets longer and longer.
For example, wash water from crop dusting planes is considered a hazardous waste because of the residue of crop-dusting chemicals that settles on the plane, and such wash water must be disposed of at a toxic waste dump, at least under the Environmental Protection Laws of all or part of California. The fact that the pesticide residue which is considered hazardous waste when washed from an airplane is the exact same residue that is deliberately put on edible crops and thus could not possibly be particularly toxic, does not affect the fact that such wash water is considered toxic and if the airplanes and equipment are ever to be washed, some provisions must be made to dispose of the wash water.
It is clearly impractical to put the wash in rinse water from crop dusting airplanes and other equipment in 55-gallon drums and pay thousands of dollars to have it shipped to a toxic waste dump every time an airplane or other piece of equipment is washed. There is a need for either disposing of the wash water on site in an environmentally sound manner, or at least consolidating the wash water from its extremely dilute level of contamination, which might be on the order of several parts per billion into a more concentrated form, which might be accumulated for a period of time, so that only occasional trips to a toxic waste dump are required, vastly reducing the cost of disposing of such wastes.